After a month of travel, the James Webb Space Telescope reached its destination at Lagrange point 2 on January 24. Since then, she has been preparing their mirrors and their instruments, to start working as soon as possible. The first step has been mirror alignment that will be in charge of sending the light to each of their instruments so that they can take images. It was a very sensitive process, so it was carefully done in several steps that have just successfully completedas explained by NASA.
In fact, the US space agency has published an image showing the photographs of each of these instruments. The light has reached them perfectly, so that they have been able to capture very clear snapshots. It is not the first time that James Webb has done something like this, he has already sent his first clear photo of a star, but for the first time all his instruments have been able to capture a lot of stars, belonging to the Magellanic cloud.
Now, does this mean that James Webb is ready to go? The truth is that no. And it is that, although all his instruments have already been able to take photographys, they will still need to be configured to perform optimally. It is estimated that this process will last about two more months, so by the northern hemisphere’s summer this space telescope could finally get down to work with its many missions.
The ‘blossoming’ of the James Webb
Given its large size, the James Webb Space Telescope was designed so that it could be sent into space creased. Later, the scientific team would promote its deployment during the trip. Very little by little, it opened like a flower and both its honeycomb-shaped mirrors and its solar panels and the rest of its elements were placed in their place. Or almost instead.
It arrived at its destination fully unfolded. However, it would still be necessary to align those newly opened mirrors, to ensure that, when catch the lightthey send it appropriately to each of the James Webb’s instruments.
This has been a long process, which has just ended with one last test, consisting of pointing the telescope towards the Large Magellanic Cloudin which they concentrate hundreds of thousands of stars on all your instrument sensors. Thus, each of them has been able to immortalize a small parcel, with great sharpness. In the image published by NASA, the photographs taken by NIRCam, NIRISS, MIRI and NIRSpec. The latter is a spectrograph, not an imager. However, you can take photos to check calibrations.
The future of space telescope instruments
James Webb has ahead two months of calibration of your instruments. Then, you can start a job for which you already have a good waiting list. And it is that many projects are waiting to obtain more data thanks to this space telescope.
For example, the discoverers of what appears to be the farthest galaxy found to date are counting on you to use your instruments to confirm that they really have broken a record. It is also expected that it can give us interesting information about the most distant star ever discovered.
Usually, james webb it will use its instruments and its telescopes to take human eyes further than they have ever been before. His preparation is being especially thorough, but surely the wait will be worth it.